Midterm correction?

Sunday

Jul 8, 2018 at 3:01 AM

Some House Republicans, already on edge with the pending November mid-term elections, seem to have entered a stage of open panic, with a scramble to replace outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, who this spring began the process of a long, awkward goodbye by announcing he would not seek re-election to the House. This has set off an internal war within rank-and-file Republicans, as various would-be leaders have begun jockeying to help define the Grand Old Party at a time of intense soul searching, and in the shadow of a president who seems destined, for better or worse, to remake the party in his own image.

During the Republican primaries leading up to the general election in 2016, many a pundit and talking head unequivocally declared that Trump was unelectable by the same party that had counted such diverse leaders as Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan as their standard bearers. Even the then-current senior leaders of the party, including the Bush family and former GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and John McCain, warned the party about tacking too much toward the rhetoric of the man who would eventually become their nominee.

By the time the 2016 presidential election had concluded and the dust had settled, the same talking heads, pundits, and a considerable number of sitting politicians made another set of similarly misinformed and inaccurate predictions that Trump would eventually settle into his role in the White House and fall in line with the generally accepted duties, courtesies, and gravitas expected of a president.

What they failed to understand was just as this had not been an ordinary presidential election, so too would this not be an ordinary presidency. This was not a president who would acquiesce to political norms. Or, to paraphrase Francis Bacon’s famous saying about Muhammad, if Trump will not come to the Republican Party, then the Republican Party must go to Trump. And go they did.

This has led to an uneasy alliance, as stalwart Republicans have gotten much of what they have long only dreamed about: draconian and deep tax reform; stripped down environmental protections; and a pro-military spending leader. What they did not necessarily expect was someone sympathetic to white nationalism and who will offer up bald-faced lies time and time again, refusing to ever apologize for his often crass manner of behaving.

So, whether they like it or not, the upcoming midterm elections are without question a referendum on the first two years of the Trump presidency. Although a small handful of Republican lawmakers have worked to distance themselves from the president, the overwhelming majority of them in both the House and Senate have been complicit in Trump’s continued position of strength, either by openly supporting it or by tacitly endorsing it with their silence. Many of those who have spoken up against Trump and his impact on the GOP have either opted to get out of politics altogether or have come to the quiet realization that they can no longer swim upstream in Republican waters that they no longer recognize.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether or not the American electorate will force this issue; initial prognostications forecasted a blue wave – some even went so far as to call it a tsunami – of successful Democratic candidates. There have even been predictions of Democrats taking back control of the House, the Senate, or even both, with election historians pointing to years and years of data that indicate that the party holding the White House almost inevitably suffers big losses during the midterms.

Of course, we have seen where such predictions have led in recent years. But although voters have relatively short memories, they are unlikely to forget everything that has happened during the past 20 months. Republicans still have time to assert or adjust where they stand in relation to Trump, but the clock is ticking, and a reckoning may be coming sooner than they think.

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